It’s make your mind up time

This piece is by our managing director Tom Lees.

Political strategists, businesses and MPs are asking themselves how Labour’s current 17-point poll lead will convert when it comes into contact with the ‘real world’ at the next general election in autumn or winter next year.

Bradshaw Advisory is a member of the British Polling Council and the Market Research Society which means we can conduct our own research around political issues and trends to provide bespoke insights to clients.

We recently undertook a representative poll of 1001 2019 voters to find out how 'hard' or 'soft' the current headline voting intention is.

Clearly, the economic noise - including today's 13th rate rise in a row from the Bank of England making borrowing more expensive - is not good for the Conservatives. But even so, all is not lost for Rishi.

Our research shows that 40% of 2019 voters are still up for grabs and could be swayed ahead to switch from their current preferred political party or ‘don’t know’ ahead of the next general election.

36% of voters say they will definitely vote Labour with 13% of voters saying that while they are leaning towards voting Labour today, they could still be swayed to cast their votes elsewhere.

Meanwhile, less than 1 in 5 (19%) of voters say they will definitely vote Conservative at the next General Election, with another 9% saying they will probably vote Conservative but could still be swayed. The Conservative vote share didn’t slip below 30% under John Major and William Hague when Tony Blair won landslides in 1997 (30.7% Conservative vote share) and 2001 (31.7% Conservative vote share), so a 28% vote share would represent the worst Conservative result in history and seems somewhat unlikely.

The Liberal Democrat leadership will be concerned that just 3% of voters say they will definitely be voting for Ed Davey’s party, with another 2% of ‘soft’ Lib Dems not yet firmly in the Lib Dem camp and still potentially open to switching allegiances before polling day.

So with more than a year to go before the next election, there still is a lot of work for parties to do to sure up and hold on to their respective voting coalitions.